Omniscience and Us

The difference between a good and bad haircut is two weeks.  Dutch the barber in Newport News would say, “That ought to hold you until you can find a real barber.”  Both of these are brought to mind today because I got a haircut and by golly it is cut.  She did a good job, trimmed my mustache as well, but I think she took a little too much off the top and it will be a while before it lies back the way it normally does.

That isn’t important, as a matter of fact almost nothing is and that’s one of the advantages of this time in my life.  I have one obligation to others and that is a Friday LTM in Lexington and that’s it.  I kind of like it this way.  I can pursue my endeavors to my heart’s content, handle requests as they come in, plan and execute the larger projects, and just do whatever I want during the day.

Today was a good example; I got a haircut this morning, talked to my daughter for a while, ate a little lunch, the chicken salad was good, then went to the golf course and played nine holes, came home to relax but had plenty of energy so I cut the grass, greeted the roofers who repaired a blown shingle, made a great sauce to go with the leftover calf’s liver, watched some news on TV and now I’m writing this blog.  None of this was planned, some of it listed but none of it planned. 

Tonight before we go to bed I’ll bring in the plants we bought yesterday, another spontaneous activity when we got fed up with basketball and the one-sided UK v. Baylor game.  We just upped and went to Lowe’s and got gardening supplies, which were on the list, and plants for the pots and flower boxes that weren’t.

 I note this because just recently I was decrying the fact that there is no spontaneity in my life.  As usual whenever I recognize or comment on a condition, a bunch of contradictions come out of the woodwork

I have edited the second of three volumes of Notes on Life and Living which will total about 650 pages.  I am not sure about printing these last two volumes because of the cost involved and the fact that even a minimum quantity of twenty-five  go undistributed.  I sent one each to my three children and heard scant little about them but then I don’t expect to hear anything.  I just want them to have the books because it is my thinking and when I’m dead that’s all they’ll have.

The booklet The Linas in Troy Missouri has enjoyed a little popularity on line and the family that received copies all commented positively about it.  My dad left almost no written records behind except for one little sentence in a diary that he started and stopped after one entry.  It was a significant entry because he pinpointed the date that his parents moved to Troy Missouri as April 1, 1932.

An odd thing, I don’t even know where that diary came from but just after I published the booklet it “appeared” in my bookcase, I opened it and found the entry in his handwriting.   The diary itself was a gift to him from a granddaughter but how it got to my bookshelf, in my study and why I opened it after I’d searched high and low for the date of the move is a mystery to me. 

This among many other instances of fortuitous discoveries makes me think that we are connected to omniscience and from time to time we tap into it by following our nose; or saying it another way, we tap into it by not interfering with the process of doing so.  Not that we know what that process is but all too often we “take steps” instead of following intuition.

In the early fall of 1958, downtown Saint Louis was as packed as New York City today.  I knew that two college buddies were there and I was at 8572 Oriole Ave when I decided I would go downtown and find them.  I took the Broadway streetcar, walked up Olive and found them at the McCrory’s Dime Store with absolutely no hint from them as to where they would be or when.  I walked right to them and didn’t think too much about it.

There may be a danger in this line of thinking, or maybe not.  I think the first requirement is to have a clear idea of for what one is looking, the second is patience, and the third is the detachment necessary to follow without interfering.  The failed attempts at tapping into it may be the lack of one of these requisites or that there is no omniscience and one waits forever to find whatever.  Personally, I think there is omniscience; there have been just too many instances of fortuitous coincidence in my life.

For some time I thought perhaps some spiritual benefactor was looking kindly upon me and arranging for me to find/get what I wanted.  I don’t think that’s true anymore.  No, I think it is what I’ve just been writing about.

And this is what I mean when I say organized religion is problematic; they can’t abandon at will a tenet of their belief system without causing a crisis of faith for those who bought into it.  If the RCC was to say that they were wrong, Mary wasn’t assumed into heaven, what would that do?  Or pick any other of the myths of Catholicism like the Eucharist; they made an about face on that in 1963 but there is/was a whole generation who continued to literally worship a piece of bread—perpetually.

I look around and see that almost all that I have is the result of the above omniscience, some has been obtained in more conventional ways but all of it has resulted from a clear idea of what I wanted, patience to persist in getting it, and often a certain detachment from the pursuit of it but taking necessary action when opportunity presented itself..

This same thing is true about relationships with other people but only partially.  The clear idea etc. gets to the encounter but there’s just no way of predicting what will happen after that.  This is what makes life among human beings and even other animals so interesting.

Waiting

Here we are in the first week of March and there are things on the horizon that will take place later; I find myself in a waiting mode.  Then, as I ponder that, I find one spends a lot of his lifetime waiting. It is because I plot and scheme and come up with things to do… in the future.

In younger years it wasn’t like that because most of the time was spent in the present.  When I reflect on many that I encounter at the pool hall, they too live more in the present.  As for me, now I think I am spending too much time on the future, setting things out there and then waiting for the time to elapse, doing them but feeling a little disappointed because the event doesn’t always live up to the anticipation of it.

As I look ahead to those things for which I am waiting, I can list them: riding in the early afternoon, dinner out in the early evening, a play later in the same evening, plotting and scheming on Sunday, Rotary Club meeting on Tuesday, an outing with Carola on Thursday, an LTM in Lexington on Friday and repeat. 

Then further out there is the Rolex in April, a trip to Va Beach in May, the presentation of my award in June, a trip to San Francisco in later June, then sometime later, as yet undetermined but probably in the second half of September, a trip to New York and Connecticut to see historic homes and the David Letterman show.

The key to bringing spontaneity back into my life may be to make the date but then forget about it until it’s time to go.  Make notes on calendars and then get involved with it when the time is right.  Part of the problem is my penchant for planning; I get pleasure from planning things out as far as possible.

The disquiet comes from being focused on tomorrow, next week, next month, the rest of the year and not thinking about what to do right now. And yet it derived from being at a loss for s.t. to do in the past.  But now it has evolved down to “if it isn’t on the calendar, then there isn’t anything to do.”  This has to be replaced by “ok, there are things on the calendar but there’s time now to do s.t., what will that be?” Then when the choice is made don’t second guess it.  Do the chosen and stay in the moment when doing it.

Like now, we had a spontaneous day then had dinner.  There was a lull afterwards and instead of thinking about tomorrow or the future, I decided to write these thoughts about waiting.  Just to do s.t. instead of waiting and to write about what has been on my mind for some time now.

And yet because there was no Friday night activity planned, we wind up at home with some movies to watch and you know what, that’s not so bad.  But think about it, there are activities going on all around town that are much more exciting than sitting here at home watching a movie on the big screen TV. What for example?  Almost anything that puts one in the company of others.

Observing those who come and go through the pool hall, I see that often people come in but not to play pool.  They come in to be with others; people whom they know and feel comfortable, albeit casually, in a place with which they are familiar and in which they are recognized and accepted.

This same scenario is repeated over and over in bars, restaurants, theaters, arenas, and stadiums. People go ostensibly to have a drink or a meal, or see a spectacle but mainly and fundamentally they go to be in the company of others.  Not necessarily interacting with them but being there with them.  It satisfies the social aspect of our being.

When we are not in the company of others we feel somewhat isolated.  The workplace has been a source of satisfaction for social needs but now there is a tendency for it to be the “home office” using telecommunications and a PC.  The interaction via a screen has replaced the personal interaction of the workplace and it is not the same.

I’ve participated in customer service chat sessions in order to solve a problem with a piece of equipment.  While these are rather sterile, there is a certain human touch provided by the interaction via the screen and keyboard.

Same is true when I chatted on AOL; there is a feeling of camaraderie and it goes a long way towards satisfying that social need.  It has the advantage that one can drop it whenever it gets to be too much; like walking out of a bar when it gets rowdy.

What’s being lost is interpersonal, in-person, interaction.  And when I say lost I mean that I don’t know where to go to get it besides being part of a crowd at a game, or part of the audience at the theater, or a non-interactive patron at a restaurant or bar.

In order to become that interactive patron, one has to invest some time and take some initiative in the same location.  IOW patronize the place, get comfy there, and interact with others who are in the same boat.  This requires a commitment that I’m not sure I’m willing to make. 

But if I was, I would have to pick a place to frequent, and make the time to go there.  That would require exploratory forays to see/ find one that fit.  Since it wouldn’t be for any purpose other than social interaction, it would have to feel right.  A perceived problem is alcohol and my choice not to drink it.  This would almost immediately make me an oddball in any bar.  So I suppose it would have to be another venue but what would that be? That’s a stumper.

What started out to be a discussion of waiting, turned into a lament for spontaneity, which turned into a strategy for meeting a perceived social need but with only mixed results.  Much more has to be done on this.